The disclosure relates generally to providing fiber optic connections in fiber optic equipment, and more particularly to port tap fiber optic cables, which may be used to support both live fiber optic connections and tap connections for monitoring the live fiber optic connections in fiber optic networks.
Benefits of utilizing optical fiber include extremely wide bandwidth and low noise operation. Because of these advantages, optical fiber is increasingly being used for a variety of applications, including but not limited to broadband voice, video, and data transmission. Fiber optic networks employing optical fiber are being developed for use in delivering voice, video, and data transmissions to subscribers over both private and public networks. These fiber optic networks often include separated connection points linking optical fibers to provide “live fiber” from one connection point to another. In this regard, fiber optic equipment is located in data distribution centers or central offices to support live fiber interconnections. For example, the fiber optic equipment can support interconnections between servers, storage area networks (SANs), and/or other equipment at data centers. Interconnections may be further supported by fiber optic patch panels or modules.
Fiber optic equipment is customized based on application and connection bandwidth needs. The fiber optic equipment is typically included in housings that are mounted in equipment racks to optimize use of space. Many data center operators or network providers also wish to monitor traffic in their networks. Monitoring devices typically monitor data traffic for security threats, performance issues and transmission optimization, for example. Typical users for monitoring technology are highly regulated industries like financial, healthcare or other industries that wish to monitor data traffic for archival records, security purposes, and the like. Thus, monitoring devices allow analysis of network traffic and can use different architectures, including an active architecture such as SPAN (i.e., mirroring) ports, or passive architectures such as port taps. Passive port taps in particular have the advantage of not altering the time relationships of frames, grooming data, or filtering out physical layer packets with errors, and are not dependent on network load.
However, some port tap solutions require a large equipment footprint and may be customized to integrate into specific types of fiber optic networks. For example, structured cabling solutions that employ fiber optic modules may include specialized port tap modules that occupy rack space and are not easily integrated into other types of fiber optic networks. Accordingly, there is a need for a port tap solution that provides more universal compatibility and a smaller footprint.
No admission is made that any reference cited herein constitutes prior art. Applicant expressly reserves the right to challenge the accuracy and pertinence of any cited documents.